...[An earlier comment by Peter Mitchell is correct to say] that funding promised to Bioline was revoked. Since I am the “silent partner” in Bioline, the librarian who made the 5 year funding commitment to the project, beginning with May of 2007, I would like to offer some clarification, in part to make sure that it is understood that I am not the person who withdrew the promised funding....
[T]he Chief Librarian of U of T...gave her consent to our 5 year funding plan [2007-2011]. However, when the new budget year came around in May of 2007, to my complete surprise, the Dean of Leslie Chan’s campus stated that he was rescinding the approval of funding previously granted by the Chief Librarian....
I am of the opinion that Dean acted improperly and that the University should fulfil the commitment that was made. With representation from my Faculty Association, I am now pressing for a review of the Dean’s decision....
Comment. Bioline is an OA pioneer and success story, directly helping researchers in developing countries and reflecting well on the U of Toronto. See our 33 past posts on it. Just yesterday Michael Geist highlighted it in his column in the Toronto Star:
...[T]he University of Toronto provided the lead support for BioLine International, which was founded in 1993 to bring scientific journals, largely from developing countries, to the Internet. Today, BioLine hosts 70 [OA] journals from 15 countries. Last year, more than 3.5 million full-text articles were freely downloaded from the site....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
